I'm an absolute beginner when it comes to arduino, electronics, etc. To be honest, I'm not even very good at physics. I got interested in learning it and started with the word clock. - http://www.instructables.com/id/Sleek-word-clock/?ALLSTEPS - I didn't really learn from the ground up (which I kind of regret), but instead I just read a ton about what other people had problems with, and looked everything up as I went. I felt like I had a fairly good grasp of what's going on, but then...I hit a wall.
I'm done with the physical clock and I tried wiring it up yesterday. I have an arduino UNO. My understanding was that I'd wire everything up using a breadboard to make sure it works, then I'd solder everything to perf boards and I'd transfer my atmega to a perf board and follow something like this - http://itp.nyu.edu/physcomp/Tutorials/ArduinoBreadboard - to make it a standalone arduino.
Now, I'm following this schematic - http://www.highonsolder.com/display/ShowImage?imageUrl=/storage/WC/Word_Clock-Schematic.JPG?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1294531692634 - but I'm really confused as to the connections leading into the atmega. I've already made the standalone "arduino". I ran "blink" on it to check that it was working, and it was. It also has an indicator LED that I haven't had any trouble with. Then I hooked it up to the rest of the clock circuit. So I loaded the clock program on the chip using the arduino, and moved that to the breadboard. But now, it won't work. I even took the chip out, uploaded "blink" again, and when I put in back in the standalone it doesn't work. I'm not sure, but I'm thinking this might have something to do with "RX", "TX" and "RTS". Currently, none of these pins on the atmega (1-3) is hooked up to anything.
Any help would be SO appreciated! I tried to do my homework, but it's a lot more helpful to get feedback from an actual person. Thanks so much in advance.